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I kinda feel now how Romans were when Caligula made his horse a senator.

@ShadySands Happy Birthday my brother! We are older, grayer, and likely heavier than we were. But we carried the legacy in our time! More than that no one could ask!

This is a story about sacrifice. It is also a story about nostalgia, but more than anything, it is a story about the sacrifices gamers make. We travel back to a time of low pixel count and greenish screens – specifically the summer of 1992. The radio that summer would blast SNAP! Rythm Is a Dancer and my cousin and I, shortly before our 13th birthdays, were in summer camp on the German island of Norderney. In the evening, after lights out, with eight kids per tent, obviously nobody slept. In our tent we did two things. Firstly, one of the boys had brought terrible horror novellas, and we read those. Over thirty years later I still have nightmares. Mostly because the story did not make sense – you can’t hide a whole labyrinth inside the walls of a bell tower! The second thing was eating chocolate and other sweets. And this is where this becomes a story of sacrifice. You see, the eating was predominantly done by the other six. The two of us would initiate it, but then we’d spend the night selling our stash to the others in the tent. In retrospect, we should have found a way to expand business to the other tents, but we were not even thirteen. There was a reason to this, which had little to do with entrepreneurial spirit. The camp organizers had permitted each kid a 50DM allowance per week for the two weeks of camp. Incidentally, as my cousin pointed out, 50DM was roughly the price of a new Game Boy game. Not eating chocolate but watching others enjoy my stash was not a choice. It was a sacrifice that only gamers will understand: others would eat so I could game. Everything went well. Until the very last day. It was hot. We were on our last excursion in town, killing time until we had to get the ferry. In the (heat of the) moment we decided to grab an ice cream. The worst 3,50 I ever spent. Also, one of the worst ice creams I ever had and most likely the reason why I still do not eat lemon ice cream. It almost put me off lemonade as well. An hour before we left, I dropped to 46,50. One, horrible tasting lemon ice cream was the reason I couldn’t pay for Gargoyle’s Quest solely through the chocolate black market. Mind, the entire process did turn Gargoyle’s Quest into one of my favourite games, even though it wasn’t really my thing – too dark in tone, too much jumping around spikes. In the end, the cool green daemon on the box cover turned out to be red! That was an unexpected plot twist. It highlighted something though about descriptions and plot relevance: how often do authors abuse the fact that in written format you do not have information until they give it to you? In comics, movies, and games, you see things from the start. Unless it is a greenish Game Boy screen and after hours and hours some NPC tells you: your skin is red. Two things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest: how I made the money to buy it and how surprised I was finding out the protagonist was red. Also, the many spikes. Three things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest: how I made the money to buy it, how surprised I was finding out the protagonist was red, the many spikes, and the gnarly trees, the inextinguishable flames, the different breath weapons… Among the many things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest is that it is a game literally worth it’s weight in chocolate.

I think he stepped aside too late, he made a fool out of himself and she failed to distance herself enough from him. There wasn't really time.

Thanks guys. We got him as a puppy. He was the runt of the litter and nobody wanted him, so he was all alone in the pet shop. My wife immediately fell in love with him (although, yeah, back then she was not my wife yet ). It was a gamble, because we didn't know how the cat would take to him. Pretty well, as it turns out, so a couple of months later we had a young Westie with all the fun mannerisms of his breed who was mostly socialized by a cat who adopted him. It made him borderline untrainable and no matter how hard we tried and added some cat mannerisms added into the mix. They're already a notoriously stubborn breed, and since the cat never once did what we told her to do, neither did he. He peed like the cat, and after he was done, he would take a step or two forward and start scratching the ground with his hind legs. You know, to cover it like the cat does in her litterbox. It was adorable. He eventually started to leave his marks here and there (even though we had him neutered, no idea where he picked that up, but he only ever did that outside) in the normal way male dogs do their business, but that was only for marking. Yeah, he did, tumors aside, he was in really good shape for his age. We only needed the vet a handful of times. The funniest one was when he was lying in a corner, whining and being miserable. That was a Sunday evening and we called the emergency vet hotline, brought him to the vet, the vet pressed a little on his abdomen to see what might be the cause for his discomfort, and then he farted loudly and everything was fine again. 300€ for flatulence. The other stuff were vaccinations and a minor injury from an ill-fated attempt at playing with another dog, and one time he ate dark chocolate that fell out of a bag. That one was a close call, but we noticed it early enough. Vet gave him something to throw up, and Simon then proceeded to take a giant dump right in the waiting area as a thank you. Like I said, he hated being at the vet. Heh. Yeah, can't imagine ever not missing him. He was a happy and super cute little dog who tried his best to be a cat. Speaking of the cat, she's been nervous for a while now. She used to play with the dog and they'd chase each other, and recently always went to check on him. She misses him and is constantly chasing my wife for attention at the moment. Back when they were both a lot younger, she'd sometimes jump on the table to steal some food and throw it down to him.

About 35 hours in, felt like writing something. Not sure how long this game is, seems like there's still lots more Overall impression is "kinda ok". Probably wouldn't play this if I wasn't interested in the DA world. Story setup felt interesting, like I said before, but after that it's felt a bit meh. Some of the factions in the game world have been changed, and IMO in a boring way. Can't avoid change, I guess, but the Qunari just feel like basic baddies now and the Crows like a vigilante group. Apparently this mostly relies on stories from non-game DA products, but doesn't save them from being boring choices. Main baddies are boring, hoping they'll shape up by the end. Most of the NPCs are either immediately on your side, or your enemies, without too much in between. Dialogue is the usual Bioware fare of quipping and one-liners. The main difference is there's no massive interrogation trees with important characters anymore, most of dialogue is either in party banter or in specific quests for them. Lots of just text stuff around to flesh out things, like in most RPGs. Exploration is quite parkoury and 3D. There's always things to fiddle with, or loot to get. It's quite smooth overall, but you can spend 30mins trying to reach a chest without figuring it out. But it does feel meaningful, in that what you find ties into the rest of the game fine. Combat grew on me a bit. At the start it felt like I was just dodging 90% of the time, but it feels quite smooth now. I don't play that many games with actiony combat like this, so not sure how other games do it. I'd still prefer the more party based approach of older DA games.

If all else fails, go on OnlyForks.

I really love this board. Almost every day, I learn something new. Today, I have learned, that Bethesda has employees, who test their games for bugs. Who would have thought, that this is reality in this Universe

I always play exactly what I am in real life, which is a paranoid schizophrenic goth girl that likes to sneak up behind people and either gnaw off their heads or repeatedly stab them in the back. Sometimes, you just have to stick with what you're best at.

70 hours, finished the game. Seems like there's some differences in ending, I think I got the best one, but not sure. Overall, I liked the game. For me it was probably the worst in the DA series, but it wasn't a bad game overall. Can't really compare it to modern AAA games since I don't play that many. Worst part was the writing. The overall plot was fine, and the ending too, but the more minute details weren't that good (the baddies were uninteresting, dialogue was often bad, quests were really repetitive etc). Or as good as previous DA games, anyway. A lot of Bioware fans seems to like the games for their writing, so maybe the game won't score that big with them. No real knowledge, haven't googled to find out. Exploration was good, but they started running out of gimmicks later on, and it got a bit repetitive. Thankfully the game ended soon after that. Combat grew on me. It's very actiony and flashy, so that might be turn off for older players. Maybe modern AAA games does it better and ignorance was bliss for me. Builds and stats seemed great, there were a lot of options and I could come up with lots of different ways to build my character. Buuut, since I really only played one, I have no idea if it's really that balanced. DA:O and DA:I were quite bad at that part (DA2 much better) so can't really claim it's Bioware's forte. The game tied up most of the plotlines from previous DA games, so it felt like they intentionally made it the last one... buuut, then So it seems they're keeping their options open.

I just dropped in to take my victory lap. I believe I predicted the 47th President of the United States would be a complete idiot who has no business being put in charge of anything? Nailed it! Of course that was a bet I really couldn't lose!

Looks like Elerond’s gloom and doom has not fully fulfilled. Pro-European Maia Sandu has won presidentship again. Looking at it after yesterday, we live in a very strange world when ex-soviet satellites with strong pro Russian sentiment among population, are better at fight against the Russian influence operations than the USA and Germany

More games should have (human) characters with slumped shoulders or slouched backs or maybe bow-legged. I get tired of all the ram-rod perfect-posture like they have poles stuck up their

You probably won't. I miss all of my dogs quite a lot, though as time goes on it feels less painful. Just do what you need to do man.

Usually clean to music from my MP3 player, a Fiio X3, on my bluetooth speaker. Have to say scrubbing the bathroom to the Soviet anthem is indeed an experience.

You naughty But I can't really see this as much of a surprise, Cyberpunk 2077 and BG3 both did this at least a year before (dragonborn genitals are horrifying). I think we all know that a segment of the internet is addicted to being mad, but this is just getting pathetic. Please just let me hate on the game for looking uncanny and having bad combat without getting spammed by videos from some mediocre youtube guy with 100 gigs of CP hentai on his hard drive. It's like NuTrek all over again, let me hate in peace you maidenless reprobates.

I am progressing well with sorting the apartment. Moving is always strange. More so when you change everything. I closed the smallest hotel in Athens. I am out of tourism. Tourism turns you into a racist. Unless you only have Australian guests - Australians are cool. Clumsy and loud perhaps, but fun and friendly and happy to be here. So I have moved into one apartment myself and it is such a strange experience to be here and not be in stress to get things ready for check in. I took down the sign from the entrance and am having a new one printed with just my art and no text.

I too am a "re-homer" of all manner of insects/critters and Ive developed a pretty effective method of capture and release. I use a clear plastic cup or glass and drop it over top of the undesirable, then I slide a piece of printer paper under the cup opening, then pick the whole thing up and out the door they go. Works like a charm. I like to believe that when I pass there will be a legion of insects and animals that Ive saved waiting for me on the other side.

This is the butterfly effect from canceling gun clubs in US schools in the 80-90's. We wouldnt be having this discussion if the bullet would have been 3 inches to the right. The nazi long game wins again.

And it looks like UA will not need the western long range weapons anymore in close future. They just hit missile ships in Caspian Sea (1500km away) which were launching missiles against UA cities. This also made at least one airport in similar range from UA, to stop operations. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/11/6/7483198/

Hey, maybe Bioware's execs let EA's execs write Veilguard out of gratitude, judging by general opinion on its story Anyway. All this talk of DA made me reinstall Origins, which I don't think I need to spend more time with, since it's one of very few games I collected 100% cheevos for, but here I am. I love how things make sense in it. It's also less brown than I remember it.

Thank you for all of your attention! You guys are really kind and helpful. Yeah I invited a friend of mine to try out the Gamepass version of the game (he does not have prior experience to the series so very clean/newly-installed game files I guess), and confirmed that there the bug still exist and it might be an unintended bug associated with the gamepass version. ironically figuring out what was happening with the affliction/resistance thing has made me learnt a lot about the game mechanics lol, despite the bug I still continue enjoying the game.

I have a bit of an itch to try the character creator to see if the characters I see in reviews are outliers or if that's really the best they can manage with the tools. But it's not an itch worth burning 80GB+ of download quota on just yet. The EA Play trial will be there forever anyway so no rush. DA1 was earnest in that Bioware put in a lot of time and effort to make the best game they could while the company was still independent. For me it didn't hit, but I respect it. Conceptually another "save the world" story was not what I was after, and in terms of narrative the game made me actively not want to save the world with the way the origin stories are written. DA2 was the opposite, in that it was extremely cynical where DA1 was earnest. Conceptually I thought it was a great idea, a smaller-scale, more personal game with lower stakes than usual. The implementation though was just cobbling stuff together in order to meet EA's extreme deadlines and it's just a procession of reused content and waves of enemies spawning out of thin air. DA3 was a single-player MMO.

When there is unexpected help at the Cosplay Hospital...

I finished The Lamplighter League. I enjoyed the game, but the ending was a big letdown. The final mission was good and my main team was effective, but it was a real blah finish. I think they were setting it up for DLC or something, but it didn't do well enough. I don't typically care that much if a game doesn't end well, but I expected at least some better lines from all these mercs I recruited.

Only a handful of hours and I feel like I'm playing a AA fantasy action adventure instead of a AAA RPG. It's going to need to really nail the landing to end up getting a positive review from me by the end. The biggest issue might be how cinematic it wants to be while not quite managing it well. The game wants to have frequent cutscenes, but very little worth having a cutscene. Very little drama or action. Just dialogue dragged on a bit too long. Needed an editing pass to cut back the word count and add some drama. Right after the prologue when the new big threat is revealed, the party gathers round to discuss next steps. The other two characters come into scene by kicking back with cups of tea and I am a little lost as to why everyone is so cozy. There's just a jarring absence of tension 90% of the time. And the new darkspawn designs are the worst yet. But, on the other hand, the blight is the best yet.

I found some elves. There's a token black elf and two asian elves, one of which is a companion. 'Tis so inclusive, it wokes me out of my immersion. To make matters worse, none of the women in the game are masturbatory material, at least so far, and Neve (one of the companions) almost sounds like that transsexual in Hogwart's: Wokacy, even though they have different voice actors. On the techincal side, turning on RT makes the game look and feel better, but it also introduces the typical glowy reflective surfaces of lesser implementations of ray traced reflections. They're not as bas as they were in Hogwart's Legacy though, so it is mostly fine. Initially, the game was excessively unstable, crashing to the desktop with an NVIDIA driver error. I changed a few things in Afterburner*, turned off the EA app overlay and use full screen mode and vsync with a 50% frame lock, i.e. the game now runs at 60 fps. Have been playing without crashes ever since. I don't know which one of these was the problem, but it is stable now. Otherwise the game's running fine with all the RT bells and whistles turned on, even without DLSS. The gameplay is a hybrid between Dragon Age: Inquisition and Darksiders, which is where I guess a lot of the dislike for the combat comes from. I'd say it is not a good fit for a Dragon Age game, but then again, what is the gameplay of a Dragon Age game really? DA:O had a more traditional RPG combat system where fiddling with the AI scripts for an hour or two was necessary to make most of the tedium go away, Dragon Age 2 had a silly click to win action combat system and Dragon Age: Inquisition was Mass Effect with melee weapons and an optional tactical mode that was by far and large completely useless. So, is it actually bad so far? No. However, there are two key elements to the game that can put off players if they actively dislike such things (but such is the case for every game). I mean, outside of the inclusive elements causing incel rage, like the companions not having Tali style thigh gaps or there being a token minority character at every turn. The gameplay is really rather action oriented, you're dodging across the screen, you have to - unless playing on Storymode - use minor combo attacks and ideally perfectly block attacks which you can use to counter attack, all the while you're managing your own abilities with mana costs and cooldowns. It is about as far removed from Dragon Age: Origins as you can possibly get. The party banter and companions might as well have been written by James Gunn or Joss Whedon. If you don't like quippy banter or actively dislike character interactions like those in Guardians of the Galaxy or Firefly, then don't bother. Just early impressions though. There was one sad moment for long time fans of the series, and that comes really early. Bianca dies. *I had a custom voltage/frequency curve set up. It was within spec, it just turned off the boost by capping the voltage and fequency at the stock spec clock of 2600MHZ. That should not have caused the instability, but who knows. Every other game, including Cyberpunk 2077, was rock solid with that curve setting so far, but eh, yeah. I can just switch back to it once I am done playing Veilguard.

Checked out a number of reviews and then reviews of the reviews (no kidding, something stank to heaven about the way the all looked identical). Looks like a bunch of "positive" reviews were so much lookalike, even an AI could do better at pretending not being cut and pasted from the same EA Template handed out to reviewers. Those not on EA's "payroll" seems to mostly focus on the story and characters rather than game mechanics (the latter apparently not being worth mentioning). Summary from almost a dozen videos, the story is bad, like really, really bad (the only exception being the ending last few hours which weren't disastrously bad) and the characters and the dialogue in particular is going to meet Rings of Power in a UFC match for worst writing ever. Edit: I.e. a no interest from me. Fooled me once with Inquisition, shame on you. Fool me twice with Veilguard? Shame on me.

Guess the guy who came up with the "push button, awesome things happen" still works at Bioware.

The color palette in DA:O was less saturated. I think that's what people mean when they say it was dark fantasy.

I skipped Anthem no problem, this one also looks skippable. Especially with scathingly dismissive reviews like this: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/dragon-age/with-the-veilguard-dragon-age-has-forgotten-its-dark-fantasy-roots-and-become-biowares-avengers/

Damn, I was going to book your hotel when I retire in 15 years and finally get to travel the world.

Find me some LGBTQ+ or feminist beer and I'll buy it even though I am teetotal. But me buying it has to annoy the right people. Then it is money well spend

So because of some youtuber you wasted money that would have bought you lots and lots of beer on something you don't need or want?

Having meetings at 0800 should be illegal.

https://bsky.app/profile/sonic.bsky.social/post/3l7lkwmn6ks2t Kamala Harris' campaign has set up an island in Fortnite, another foray into the gaming space for Democrats. Trump's campaign also has an in-game presence as the antagonists in the classic franchise "Wolfenstein"

I do not want to turn this into political debate, but since 2022, there is really not much nice, that Ukrainian can say about Amnesty International, due to some of their reports about the war, which were really “sloppy” there has been a lot of debate about these reports in Way Off-Topic threads during that time as well.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Scratching their games off my wishlist. For now…

If Obsidian expands on the lore surronding the Apotheosis project, they better name the head npc Noqn for your amazing contribution and dedication.

Nevermind, I could do it quick and dirty by comparing the parsed expression text... 2024-10-26 Users can now select "Find Similar" when clicking Conditional or Script rows. It can be written like this: *GenericAbility.ActivationPrerequisites != "" *GenericAbility.ActivationPrerequisites = "IsHealthPercentage(This, LessThanOrEqualTo, 50)" you can also use &= to find conditionals with partial matches (see more here https://gitlab.com/noqn/apotheosis/-/wikis/General-Instructions/Queries#string-selector) *GenericAbility.ActivationPrerequisites &= "IsHealthPercentage("

2024-10-25 Right-clicking a value in a GameData tab and selecting "Find Similar" will open the Query sidebar and search for other objects that has a matching value. I think this is going to be insanely convenient, thanks for the idea @Cmushi

No no, you go to Vegas to get Int bonus from the surgeon, to maximize skill points gained during the game.

If it's a fly, roach, ant, or those stupid little moths that like to eat all your flour/nuts/grains, and it's in the house, it dies. If it's a mosquito and it's anywhere near me, it dies. On the other hand, if I'm outside and I see a bee/fly/lizard/whatever got itself stuck in the pool, I'll fish it out and put it in the shade to give it a chance to recover (if it does). It's less that I mind killing an insect (vs. my convenience) and more that I don't like "suffering." Spiders I leave alone, except poisonous ones (around here that just mean black widows). Although I won't let them turn the house into a webbed mecca. Or if I'm in bed and a spider crawls across my pillow near my face, there's a decent chance I'll kill it without thinking. The funniest tale in this arena for me is still when I rescued/nursed a small butterfly back to health. When I went into the yard to release it, it left my hand and flew into the air, freeeee. Then 3 seconds later a bird came dive bombing out of a tree and ate it. I was aghast for 5 more seconds, then hubby and I howled with laughter. Such is life.

Had a great morning, life is good! Hop onto internet, check some news headlines etc. Economics, War, Politics, Hatred! Everyone's insane! Humanity is a terminal virus! ....oh yeah, that's why I stay off the internet more and more now. Imma gonna go kill some zombies and build some towers to feel better again, now. Hope everyone has a great morning/afternoon/evening!

That's Gothic, baby. Enemies act as barriers where you can go. That was prior to Oblivion ruining everything, basically. That said, I was able to walk very far into the map by sticking onto the road (and fleeing from enemies) in Drova so far. And the full release is a different thing to the teaser I played... in a good way. Turned off the player position on the map and tutorials immediately. Also went with the single autosave format and no starting bonus. Gonna play KCD II next year as "hardcore exploration" as can also. There's surelly gonna be an option again.